One of these days Stefan Struve is finally going to realize that, even in the UFC heavyweight division, he is a giant among men. One of these days it’s going to hit him that he’s nearly seven feet tall with arms like a gibbon, and then a lot of UFC heavyweights are going to be in big, big trouble.

Maybe it will happen out of the blue one day. Maybe he’ll be at the supermarket when a little old lady asks him to hand her a jar of pickles off the top shelf, and that’s when he’ll realize he has to crouch down to get it for her.

Or maybe – and here’s a crazy thought – his eureka moment already took place, and it happened right in front of our eyes during Saturday’s UFC on FUEL TV 5 main event. If so, it didn’t happen easily. It certainly didn’t happen in the first round, when Struve was getting caught all too easily by a man who was 7 inches shorter, yet had no trouble wading in close enough to whack him in the face almost at will.

Judging by that first frame alone, you’d have thought that Stipe Miocic was going to have a relatively easy time of it. Then Struve came out in the second and started sticking Miocic with jabs before thumping him with uppercuts, and before he knew it the Dutchman had another comeback victory to add to his ledger.

That might not have been the easiest way to go about it (and, sorry Stefan, but I’m not sure it makes you a top-five heavyweight just yet – not unless Daniel Cormier retired and no one told me), but Struve got the job done in the end. Maybe he even learned some variation on the lesson that heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson had to spend a few weeks in jail to learn: a man his size should never (or at least rarely) have to take a punch.

On to other action from Nottingham…

Has Dan Hardy taught us the value of a little patience?

Now that he’s won two in a row it’s official: Hardy has a winning streak going. But it might not have happened if the UFC had cut him after his third (or fourth) consecutive loss. It’s a good reminder that one losing skid does not necessarily make you an irredeemably bad fighter, and we should applaud the UFC for giving “The Outlaw” a chance to turn things around. At the same time, we should remember why Hardy got that chance. It’s his stand-and-bang style that convinced the UFC stick with him, but it’s that same style that often got him in trouble.

Look at how Hardy beat Amir Sadollah on Saturday. It wasn’t by being the same old slugger we’d come to know and expect entertaining defeat from. It was by being a complete mixed martial artist. It makes you wonder, if Hardy can learn to do something other than stand and bang, what would happen if other fighters were given the chance to stick around and learn some other skills? What if those same fighters felt comfortable taking a few more chances, rather than fearing that the axe would come for them if they dropped two or three in a row?

I’m not saying the UFC should keep paying fighters who do nothing but lose, but it is a little weird that the same organization that promotes a risk-taking, gun-slinging style for the sake of keeping its fans happy is also sometimes a little too quick to pull the plug if the losses start piling up. The UFC stuck with Hardy and it paid off. Would it have been so unthinkable to do the same with Gerald Harris?

Can we stop messing around and just admit that Matt Wiman is pretty good?

I get that, in some way, he still seems like another also-ran from another season of “The Ultimate Fighter.” You might even forget that he’s still in the UFC until you see his name pop up on a fight card. But after beating Paul Sass at his own game with a first-round submission, Wiman is 5-1 in his last six fights. And that one? That was a decision loss to Dennis Siver, and it could have easily gone Wiman’s way.

That’s not me arguing for an immediate title shot for Wiman, but it’s worth pointing out that he’s done enough to shed those old labels and be taken seriously in the lightweight division. Also, for those who get the urge to boo as soon as a fight hits the mat, the Wiman-Sass bout was nearly four minutes of almost nothing but grappling, and it was as exciting as any fight on this card. Wiman threw a total of eight strikes en route to victory. But hey, he landed seven of them, so at least his percentage is good.

Yes, bantamweights do finish fights

You’d expect a guy who goes by the nickname “One Punch” to have more devastating knockouts to his credit. Brad Pickett took the first step in remedying that problem when he dropped Yves Jabouin with a mean uppercut, then followed up with a couple more unnecessary shots before referee Leon Roberts could jump in there and sacrifice his body to save Jabouin’s face. Remember all that hand-wringing about the lighter weights and their lack of finishing ability? Pickett’s 2-1 in three fights with the UFC and he’s yet to see the third round. Maybe it’s the hat. Okay, it’s probably not the hat.

DaMarques Johnson takes his chances, and his lumps

“Darkness” took the bout with Gunnar Nelson on short notice, and just as he was coming off injury suspension following the knockout he suffered in early August. In retrospect, it might have been a bad idea, for several reasons.

For one, there’s the brain stuff. Granted, Nelson’s not known as a slugger, and it was ultimately his submissions that proved to be Johnson’s undoing, but it’s still not a great idea to be cagefighting eight weeks after a concussion. The experts will tell you that it’s not even about avoiding direct blows to the head – it’s about rest. Worrying about weight-cutting and fighting again so soon after that is probably a bad idea, even if Johnson says he isn’t planning to live long enough to pay the bill.

Then there are practical career concerns. That’s the third loss in a row for Johnson, and we’ve already covered what that usually means in the UFC. He stepped up and did his employers a favor, but you can still find him on Twitter this week, answering questions about who he’ll fight next with replies like: “Depends if I get cut or not.”

If that doesn’t bum you out, you need to develop your empathy muscles. Again, I doubt Johnson will get cut so soon after taking one for the team. At the same time, that was probably too much to even ask of him just then, and at a time when he might have felt like he couldn’t say no without putting himself in a bad spot with the UFC. After all, we see what happened to Matt Mitrione after he turned down a fight with Daniel Cormier. Dana White just put his business in the streets, and all while shaking his head at the man’s career moves. It’s hard for a lot of fighters – and remember, these are the kind of dudes who generally think they can beat up anybody – to resist that pressure to step up and fight. For both his health and his career longevity, Johnson might have been better off staying home this weekend. And yet somehow I suspect that he’d make the same exact decision if he had it to do over again.

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

The man known for cranking submissions to the point of injury added eye-gouging to his repertoire. But is the controversy of Rousimar Palhares too essential to his bizarre, awful appeal for his employers to take any meaningful action against him?